Was the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year faked with Photoshop, or merely manipulated?

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Updated @ 4:32pm 5/14: An independent expert in the field of image forensics, Eduard de Kam, has analyzed the original Raw file, compared it to the prize-winning JPEG file, and concluded that “all of [the pixels] are exactly in the same place.” He also says that the final photo has experienced “a fair amount of post-production” (as in, dodging, burning, etc.), which probably explains a lot of the seemingly incredible lighting in the image.

Updated @ 5:00am 5/15: Neal Krawetz, the forensic analyst who originally claimed that the image was significantly altered, has issued a response to the World Press Photo’s independent analysis. In short, despite the independent analysis, Krawetz still believes he is vindicated in saying the award-winning photo has been significantly modified. There’s a roll-over image on his site that shows two different versions of the image — and it quite clearly shows that the award-winning photo has been subject to more than just dodging/burning. The original blog post remains below — but we have inserted new section that discusses the new revelations.

Updated @ 6:31pm 5/15: Hany Farid, an expert in image forensics, says: “We have reviewed the RAW image, as supplied by World Press Photo, and the resulting published JPEG image. It is clear that the published photo was retouched with respect to both global and local color and tone. Beyond this, however, we find no evidence of significant photo manipulation or compositing.” On the flip side, Krawetz has also provided further analysis of the XMP data, which really does seem to suggest that the prize-winning photo was the result of four different photos. “I still believe my conclusion was correct. The fact that external reviewers confirmed both global and local modifications just makes my day,” says Krawetz. “And if World Press Photo believes that the modifications were acceptable for their contest, then that really is fine.” Again, the original block post remains below — but we have inserted another block towards the end, to explain the current state of play.

It turns out that the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year — the largest and most prestigious press photography award — was, in actual fact, a fake. The World Press Photo association hasn’t yet stripped the photographer, Paul Hansen, of the title, but presumably it’s just a matter of time. Rather than discussing the politics of photo manipulation, though — is it faked, or is it merely enhanced? — we’re going to look at how Hansen seemingly managed to trick a panel of experienced judges with his shooping skillz, and how a seasoned computer scientist spotted the fraudulent forgery from a mile off.

The photo, dubbed Gaza Burial, was purportedly captured on November 20, 2012 by Paul Hansen. Hansen was in Gaza City when Israeli forces retaliated in response to Palestinian rocket fire. The photo shows two of the casualties of the Israeli attack, carried to their funeral by their uncles. Now, the event itself isn’t a fake — there are lots of other photos online that show the children being carried through the streets of Gaza — but the photo itself is almost certainly a composite of three different photos, with various regions spliced together from each of the images, and then further manipulation to illuminate the mourners’ faces.

This revelation comes from Neal Krawetz, a forensic image analyst. There were two main stages to the analysis: First an interrogation of the JPEG’s XMP block, which details the file’s Photoshop save history, and then pixel-level error level analysis (ELA). To begin with, the XMP data shows that the original, base image was converted from Raw format and opened in Photoshop on November 20, 2012 (the same date that it was taken). Then, on January 4, 2013, the XMP block shows that a second Raw image was opened and added to the original. An hour later, a third image was spliced in. Finally, 30 minutes later the photo chimera was actually saved to disk. The January 4 date is interesting because it shows that the final photo was only edited a couple of weeks before the January 17 submission deadline, not soon after original photo was taken in Gaza — in other words, it was probably edited specifically for the contest.

2013 World Press Photo of the Year: Gaza Burial, by Paul Hansen, subjected to ELA analysis by Neal Krawetz

The next step is error level analysis. ELA basically compares the error level of pixels that have been modified by the JPEG compression algorithm (low amounts of change), and pixels that have been modified with photo manipulation (higher change). In the image above, which has been subjected to ELA, we see clear markers that are consistent with the photo’s spliced-and-manipulated history. Regions that have only been subjected to normal JPEG compression should have faint red/blue patches, while white patches show areas that have been subject to other forces. The bright white edges are caused by Photoshop’s sharpening algorithm — but the other bright white regions are likely due to extensive manipulation. Take a look at the man on the far left, carrying the child’s feet — his magically, digitally illuminated face is clearly shown on the ELA map. In fact, almost every face in the picture has been brightened, as have the children’s shrouds.

The final nail in the coffin is good ol’ shadow analysis. At the time the photo was taken — 10:40am, in the winter — the sun should be fairly low in the sky. The shadows on the left wall are consistent with a sun location (shown below) that should cast deep, dark shadows on the mourners’ right sides — but, as you can see, those magical light rays seem to be at work again.

Basically, as far as we can surmise, Hansen took a series of photos — and then later, realizing that his most dramatically situated photo was too dark and shadowy, decided to splice a bunch of images together and apply a liberal amount of dodging (brightening) to the shadowy regions. For what it’s worth, Hansen claims that the light in the alley was natural — and to be fair, sometimes magical lighting does occur. I think most of you will agree, though, that the photo simply feels fake — there’s just something about the lighting that sets off a warning alarm in your brain. As for why World Press Photo didn’t forensically analyze the photo using freely available, advanced, accurate analysis tools such as FourMatch or FotoForensics… who knows.

Oh, I forgot to mention the best bit: Hansen was meant to provide the Raw file for his winning photo, as proof that he didn’t significantly modify the final image — but so far, he hasn’t.

When is an image fake, and when is it merely enhanced?

The bigger discussion, of course, is whether Gaza Burial is actually fake — or just enhanced to bring out important details. This is a question that has plagued photography since its inception. Should a photo, especially a press photo, be purely objective? Most people think the answer is an obvious “yes,” but it’s not quite that simple. What if a photo is perfect, except that it’s taken at an odd angle — can you digitally rotate it? What about cropping? What if there’s dust on the lens/sensor/film — can you digitally remove it?

Perhaps most importantly, though, cameras simply don’t capture the same gamut of color or dynamic range as human eyes — a photo never looks the same as the original image perceived by your brain. Is it okay for a photographer to modify a picture so that it looks exactly how he remembers the scene?

[Updated @ 5:20am 5/15]: Shortly after we published this story, the original version of the photo, which was published by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, came to light. As you can see below, the two photos are significantly different in color, tone, light, and shadow.

Irrespective of whether these color/tone changes are acceptable or not in photojournalism, there are actual, pixel-level changes as well. In the original photo, the right-hand child has a bruise that runs up to his hairline — in the World Press Photo of the Year, this bruise is gone. Curiously, the man on the front-left has had his hairline altered in the prize-winning photo, too. It is clear that some actual manipulation is at work here.

[Updated @ 6:40pm 5/15]: While World Press Photo has produced independent analysis from Hany Farid and Eduard de Kam that seems to rebut Neal Krawetz’s claims, Krawetz then goes on to rebut almost all of the points made by Farid and de Kam. At the moment, the onus seems to be on World Press Photo to produce more evidence that the photo isn’t significantly manipulated.

Further confusing the situation, Fourandsix (which was co-founded by Hany Farid) told me on Twitter that the Raw image they analyzed matches the prize-winning photo — but he hasn’t compared the Raw photo with the original photo published by Dagens Nyheter, which is clearly different from the prize winner. Basically, this photo has been altered at some point in its life, but it still isn’t clear who altered it or when it was altered.

Updated @ 7:09am 5/14: The language about the final image being a composite of three separate images has been softened slightly.

Updated @ 9:50am 5/14: The Huffington Post has learned that Paul Hansen is working with the WPP and independent imaging experts to determine the photograph’s level of manipulation. Hansen has said a single file was used, though it was “developed over itself.” It’s being determined whether or not what he did was in violation of the WPP’s rules.

The original title of this story was “How the 2013 World Press Photo of the Year was faked with Photoshop,” but has been updated, following the continuing controversy.

Tagged In

“Is it okay for a photographer to modify a picture so that it looks exactly how he remembers the scene?”
That turns an Objective item into a Subjective item. What the photographer sees is not important. What he records is.
If the photographer can record what he Thinks he sees….well…..they call that a painter.

Yoda

The real question is: “Is it ok for a photographer to modify a picture so that it looks closer to how he saw it with his eyes ?”

videmus

It would seem like you wouldn’t need a camera to be that kind of “photographer”. Just trawl Facebook for photos of places you’ve been and manipulate them to fit your memory of that place. BAM! Now you’re a photographer.

woculozacen

“for” a few hours. Read more on

Esombeed

Pretty easy to get to that
conclusion, when you can’t spare a minute thinking about how EVERYTHING
in photography is subjective. Focal length, depth of field, framing,
exposure, processing, all subjective. Photographers have been dodging
and burning the hell out of their prints forever, I don’t see a problem
in doing it like he did, rendering several layers from the same RAW
file, a single shot. This article is bullshit.

Lambert Heenan

Could not agree more. If we were to apply Krawetz standards then to all press photography then nobody would be allowed to publish any JPEG that came from any digital camera, because they have all been post-processed before they even leave the camera’s memory card. Can anyone say “Barer color filter array”. Every shot is processed, even those taken on Foveon sensors.

Likewise, Krawetz would have us raid the Ansel Adams collections and burn them all. Adams was a master printer, and just as manipulative of his images as any modern day photographer.

When I started reading it I thought they were talking about a composition of some sorts, not an actual “upgraded” picture (whether it was an upgrade or not is for the public to decide though). If they would really want “true” pictures, we should all go back to the old school reflex cameras + film and let the developing occur in a “neutral” place (ie without retouching by the photographer in question).

Pretty easy to get to that conclusion, when you can’t spare a minute thinking about how EVERYTHING in photography is subjective. Focal length, depth of field, framing, exposure, processing, all subjective. Photographers have been dodging and burning the hell out of their prints forever, I don’t see a problem in doing it like he did, rendering several layers from the same RAW file, a single shot. This article is bullshit.

Steve Davis

Yeah, it’s sounding like what he did was the equivalent of applying high dynamic range to the image. As long as he didn’t literally splice in extra people, or something of that sort, I don’t see what the problem is. Photographers since the beginning of photography have been manipulating photographs in order to adjust for shadow or areas that would be burned-out if they received equal exposure to the rest of the image.

My thoughts exactly. A HDR technique was used and this would hardly be regarded as ‘faking’ a photo. It would liken converting from RAW to JPEG image manipulation. Would changing the levels in PS be considered ‘faking’ a photo? How about white balance settings in every digital camera available now?

Colourblind

You should read the last two paragraphs, subjectivity arises the moment the picture is taken by a camera. The result varies depending on camera model, lens, shooting speed, aperture, color processing…

Photo cameras can’t reproduce reality in a completely objective way, because that just isn’t possible.

Take the article’s picture: can YOU see an image like that, in wide angle? ¿Are these walls bent over the centre of the road? Wide angle lens distort proportions and distances. Well, it does that in comparission with our lens (eyes), which are equivalent to a 45-50mm focal length objective (in a 35mm frame camera).

There is subjectivity everywhere in pictures, what matters is to be able to say why.

Aurore Mam Gill

The solution is simple and hasn’t been done.

Produce the RAW file(s). Prove you did nothing wrong. It was shooped, admitted after proven. RAW production should be mandatory….otherwise you could have painted it, not captured it. No longer capturing events, but complete fabrication. ala…the lochness monster.

So, with all we’ve learned about this, how about retracting your “It turns out that the 2013 World
Press Photo of the Year, was, in actual fact, a fake”, statement? It would be a noble and necessary gesture.

So, with all we’ve learned about this, how about retracting your “It turns out that the 2013 World
Press Photo of the Year, was, in actual fact, a fake”, statement? It would be a noble and necessary gesture.

I believe most photography contest requires RAW files to be available for verification.

petrolly

I honestly don’t understand the article regarding the authenticity of the RAW file and the analysis done on the file. Is Anthony asserting that the RAW file analysis he links to in the first paragraph does not have integrity, and/or the judges are lying?

There are so many poorly reasoned arguments and assertions in this article, I am genuinely confused by it. Anthony asserts a composite, yet doesn’t provide any evidence for it–the “evidence” provided includes an interrogation of the XMP save history… but this is really weak evidence that could easily have come from a RAW converter round-tripping, as explained in the RAW file analysis he links to in the first paragraph.

petrolly

That being said, even if this photo is not composited, an entirely separate debate is probably warranted regarding the aggressive photoshopping the photographer obviously did, in light of his profession being photojournalism. It’s so aggressive that I think the manipulation detracts from the power of the image.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve seen darkroom specialists take, literally, HOURS to get the perfect print from the negatives of the masters (Cartier-Bresson, Capa, etc…). Every image you’ve ever seen and admired has been worked on in this “aggressive” manner. Bottom line: The details you see are in the negative or, in this case, the file. Nobody drew anything, nobody added anything. So relax and enjoy the work, eh?

petrolly

I don’t? Are you a PJ? Have you worked in a darkroom? I’m guessing not because you only said you’ve “seen” them do this. Well, I’ve actually done it. What’s fine for the best burning and dodging for toning is to get to a place that fits the human eye’s dynamic range and the reality of how the photog remembers the scene–and I’m ONLY talking about modern photojournalism, not the “masters” or another art form. Only PJ.

Since you have a need to assume a lot about my comments, I’ll be far more specific for you.

I don’t want to debate the current rules of photojournalism, but having been one perhaps unlike yourself, here’s my take in simple terms that are subjective:

A reasonable aesthetic standard (not talking about material changes here) in simple terms is that the changes not make the photo look unreal or fake to a reasonable observer, which absolutely dilutes the power of the image–that is, markedly different from the way the photog remembers the scene and in a way that a reasonable observer is distracted by perceived deviation from subjective reality. I know you mentioned the “masters,” but look at any Bruce Davidson photo and not one of them looks as phony as this photo–why? because he toned, in part, using something like the above criteria. He knew that conveying a sense of reality of being there is far more powerful than trying to force drama like a Spielberg movie with the music telling you exactly how to feel.

The point I”m making is that the photo looks fake. I showed it to my wife and brother, and each independently said, great photo. But then my wife looked at it more and said, “…looks like it was lit professionally,” then upon further look said it “didn’t look real.”

Robert Morris

Looks to me like the author posted an ideologically motivated take-down, and can’t bring himself to admit that his own analysis is bullshit. It is kind of sad, but also kind of hilarious. This whole article should disappear in a day or so when an editor sees this and realizes how embarassing it is.

mymorna

Interesting question. Last time,we had a press photographer (mostly for sports events) talking at our local club. He told us he almost never used RAW-files and didn’t see the use for it.
What if a photographer never had a RAW-file to begin with?

mymorna

What is an objective item? Photography is subjective by default. What if a photographer only captures part of the total scene (and he always does, a photo never contains all the information about a situation)?
It is photography’s subjectivity what makes it so interesting. It shows how a photographer perceives a situation.

That being said, I think the question rather irrelevant. It’s not whether a photographer should be objective, it’s whether people should be made conscious that a photo is never objective.
Also, I think contests should have straight forward rules on allowed manipulations. That way the only discussion is whether the contestant sticked to the rules.

Rather a naive question. Most serious digital photographers shoot in RAW file and have to process the files afterwards to extract reality from the RAW data (which are flat data files devoid of sharpness, colour and contrast).

However, if you shoot in jpeg, you are allowing your camera to create the supposed ‘reality’ of a scene by automatically adding what it regards to be the appropriate amount of sharpness, colour and contrast. So, you are not only losing control of your photograph but you are losing about 70%+ of the information your camera recorded. (A Raw file from my SLR is 22 million pixels. A Jpeg is 6 million).

And manipulation isn’t necessarily altering reality. For example, I use neutral density graduated filters to darken skies simply to make the camera see what my eye actually saw. This is because the exposure latitude of the human eye is much greater than that of a camera so often help is needed to make a photo look like what you actually saw.

Indeed, how many photos have you taken and thought, that doesn’t look like what I saw? A good photographer knows how to overcome that situation.

Carlos Herrera

Dodging and burning was invented in the age of chemical photography, when printing to paper. Nothing new here.

Ellis Vener

More than dodging and burning is involved : he added elements from multiple frames.

rk99

Yes but this article makes that claim several times without actually outlining the evidence for this – they’ve layed a lot of excellent analysis to show how the image was dodged (which in my opinion I have no problem with, adjusting for light levels is not a manipulation of the images ‘content’ and I bet many winning images in previous years have been dodged too, either digitally or in the darkroom)

Show us how the image was cut and composited together please – until then I don’t think its fair to damn the photographer.

Isin’t it obvious, the photo was taken in an alley with horrible light. I’m sure the buildings bounced the light well but not enough. Everything in this photo is sharp so the photographer had to be using an f/stop around 16-22+…everything is sharp so the shutter speed must have been at LEAST 1/125th to have some chance of stopping ALL of the subjects motion. The ISO must have been extremely high but there is no noise, not even in the shadows were they should be.

Look at the sky, either the highlights and exposure or both were brought down to a point were the sky is unrealistic.

Why is there a combination of harsh and soft shadows on the buildings and from the subjects. The man on camera left, you see that shadow on his back…where did it come from? Why is his face well lit while on the wall you can see the harsh light. Why are the lower extremities of the 2 men on camera left completely dark?

As Glenn Scott said “What the photographer sees is not important. What he records is. If the photographer can record/manipulate to what he Thinks he sees….well…..they call that a painter.

Do you need someone to hold your hand through this, just open your eyes and see the light.

That’s just stupid.. He uses a very wide lens which puts everything in fokus, even at f/5,6, or even 4. So the ISO-bullshit is exactly that.

Yeah. He brought down the sky to get coverage in it. Nothing wrong there. It’s being done all the fucking time. And yeah. He made the faces brighter. So what? It’s been done in the darkroom for a century. Nothing wrong there, either.

“Everything in this photo is sharp so the photographer had to be using an f/stop around 16-22+”

Firstly, you can’t look at an image this size and say that it’s sharp enough that you can determine the f-stop. The high sharpness you perceive is exactly that: perceived. Secondly, all the lenses I own have a sharpness peak somewhere between f8-f13; above that they deteriorate again. Up at f22 you’re going to get significant diffraction effects, so sharpness will be far from optimal.

Steve Davis

That’s just not at all true. If he was shooting with, say, a 24mm 1.4, he could easily have gotten very sharp images from roughly 3 feet out to infinity. With a digital camera, say a Canon, he could get a pretty noise-free shot even at 1600 ISO, but in photojournalism, he probably didn’t have time as the crowd was moving towards him to say, “O.k., I’m going to set the camera to do in-camera HDR, which I’ll have to take as a jpeg, because the camera can’t handle doing that as RAW.” so in other words, I don’t havve any problem with everything in the photo being sharp, and if he took the shot at f/4, f/5.6, it’s possible that his image got clipped on one side or the other, or both, and that he needed processing to fix things. Nothing wrong there.

sympatikos

I don’t agree with your f-stop. It’s a wide angle lens and could keep focus at f8, maybe even 5.6.

sympatikos

If this picture was iso 400 and f22 @ 1/125 we couldn’t see anything except the glare on the bald guys’ heads. All else would be lost.

Mustafa

“The ISO must have been extremely high but there is no noise, not even in the shadows were they should be.”

I find it amusing that you know about your ISOs, apertures and F-Stops, but not about combining exposures. Have you never exposed different portions of a negative for different lengths of time with different settings? It’s one of the first things I learnt to do in a darkroom.

It’s the same principal in digital photography. You take the same photo in three different exposures, and you merge them into one. Magically, you have the same amount of detail in the shadows and highlights as you do in the midrange. It’s obvious, even at first glance that he’s using HDR for this shot.

The photo isn’t fake. It’s been enhanced. A huge majority of photography, even (and I’d say, especially) in the pre-digital age is enhanced in this way.

” If the photographer can record/manipulate to what he Thinks he sees….well…..they call that a painter.”

Thank you sir, I am now having unwanted Gombrich flashbacks. (nitpick, that statement has everything to do with “the riddle of style” in relation to the realist style of painting – no fauvist, cubist, expressionist, impressionist, etc painter thinks they actually see what they’re painting) The argument is moot to begin with. You know as well as I do that the camera cannot record what the eye sees to begin with. The camera records only what the photographer instructs it to.

How is tweaking camera settings different, in terms of enhancement, than applying multiple exposures? Either way, you’re defining the eventual output. Personally I’d call shenanigans when the photographer starts adding elements to the photograph that aren’t already there.

Just accept you’re wrong and the photo is not a fake.
“When I compare the RAW file with the prizewinning version I can indeed see that there has been a fair amount of post-production, in the sense that some areas have been made lighter and others darker. But regarding the positions of each pixel, all of them are exactly in the same place in the JPEG (the prizewinning image) as they are in the RAW file. I would therefore rule out any question of a composite image.”

He added nothing. Look at the photograph. It’s obvious he’s using multiple exposures (same photograph, different exposures). This has been done one way or another since the dawn of photography.

To put it another way, everything you see is in the original photo, how well you perceive the details depends on exposure. Combined the same original image with itself at different exposures, and presto, you have detail everywhere.

Tweezer2Go

Photographers should certify they have not “unduly” manipulated the image. Acceptable changes could include only those enhancements that are applied to the entire image at once, such as brightness, contrast, gamma, dynamic range enhancement, color balance, edge enhancement (unsharp mask), despeckle, and rotations. Anything that leads the viewer to believe something occurred that didn’t should not be allowed, even the ones described above. Any manipulation that operates solely on a subset of the overall pixel space should be forbidden. This would include localized distortions, smudging, copying and pasting (both from within one and from another photo), localized dodging and burning, etc. Yes, film photographers could dodge and burn in the darkroom but it’s time to set tighter standards for today.
Years ago I recall that National Geographic once Photoshopped in a surfboard tip because it had been cut off in the original and they didn’t like the look. Then they put this on the cover!

There is a whole field of interest in forensically traceable photos to be used by law enforcement investigations and presented as evidence. Such traces preserve the original and document each and every change made to the original as it was processed through the workflow in a digitally irrefutable and reversible form. Some cameras have the capability but the whole process needs to be integrated.

That is wishful thinking. Plenty whole-image manipulations bring
images back to how it felt, yet can be abused. Still very subjective.
Tone curves, sky gradients, radial softening effects, and many more used
for decades in analogue photography with praise. Those same effects are
often frowned upon now. Burning and dodging are very old technics
exactly aimed to bring photo dynamic range close to eye perception – and
used properly in this case. And not, the equipment is not yet on par
with human eye. And never will be – simply because our eye is dynamic,
yet photo is static.

The “righteous” blame may be
applicable if the competition specified exactly manipulation conditions.
Overall call blanket for no manipulation is unrealistic, unreasonable,
and unachievable trolling. Nobody “should” comply with someone else’s best ideas, just because those ideas feel good for that person. Who are you to tell others what to do?

julieta

everything is subjective, always, because it’s only a point of view, and we all have different ones. believing this “objective kind of photojournalism” is really old. and this whole article, trying to proove… what exactly? that photographers use photoshop??? which btw has always been like this, or do you really think that the dark room was not the same kind of tool for the analog era? so let’s focus on what’s important here, WHAT HAPPENED IN GAZA! that’s the whole ponit of the picture, that’s why it won, because it shows the horror of the most significant event of the year. stop being so perverse and naif of always focusing on little details like if the light is right or wrong, and try to understand the real reason why the World Press chose this picture as the winning one.

templestark

It’s not the whole point of the award though. You can’t put images taken at different times together and label it a photo. You can call it a collage. The photographer knew he was being horribly dishonest – and it always blows my mind – why? Paul Hansen obviously has a job he does and does well, why ruin everything for one, barely noticed award?

Darkieee

He didn’t “put images taken at different times together and label it a photo”. What he did was to take the same image, with different exposure, and copy one on top of the other. It’s called HDR.

templestark

From the reporting that’s not quite what happened. An an update I’m hoping is elsewhere but World Press denied any manipulation beyond light.

I get that much; but what of it? Who is it par for the course for? The only thing in common with all three of those links is Islam, and possibly antipathy toward Israel. I’m just not really sure what DorothyP was trying to say….

Benito Aramando

I get that, I’m just not sure who it’s supposed to be par for the course for, and what DorothyP is actually trying to say by pointing it out.

DorothyP

Yes, the point is that most acclaimed photos from that part of the world are fakes.

Benito Aramando

Most, huh?

DorothyP

Not most photos–“the MOST ACCLAIMED photos.” The MSM wants salacious images of suffering and mayhem. So in order to sell photos from this part of the world, photographers have to create the images to go along with the version of the news narrative that papers/magazines want. Nothing to do with the governments. This is about selling the news.

That is why they call it Pallywood. I think most people here are ignorant of the history of this sort of thing and just how widespread it is Dorothy.

Benito Aramando

Hmmm, perhaps it depends who you look to for acclaim. I have
been aware of a few, but not too many. The Iranian missile photo only came to my attention originally because the fakeness itself was the story (this is why I mentioned governments, incidentally, because the Iranian government still seems the most likely culprit in that case). But I’ve also been aware of high-profile fake image scandals in other fields, like wildlife photography. MSM wants sensational images, period.

But if you’re right then I think that it says as much about
our media in the West as anything else. Sorry if I’m stating the obvious, it’s just that from your first and follow-up posts I thought it sounded a bit like you were looking to use a few images exposed as staged or faked as a reason for blanket-dismissal of evidence of truths you don’t wish to acknowledge. I see a fair bit of that
going on.

DorothyP

It’s the “World Press Photo of the Year”. Thus acclaim. You’re not a photo agency.

Benito Aramando

1) This is ONE prize, so hardly lends a lot of weight to your pronouncement that “most” acclaimed photos from “that part of the world” are faked or staged. It certainly doesn’t invalidate my point.
2) The controversy surrounding the integrity of this photo has since been cleared up, so it therefore doesn’t add any weight to your argument. Unless you’ve got evidence that the whole scene was staged.

DorothyP

“Truths I don’t wish to acknowledge” would appear to be falsified “truths”.

Benito Aramando

Then they wouldn’t be truths, would they? I was talking about truths, as in the meaning of the word true.

Sam_Holloway

Fittingly, there is less to this exposé than meets the eye. The author’s
unequivocal and assertive early use of the words ‘fake’ and ‘faked’ is
judgmental and sexy, and perhaps intended for an audience that
apparently isn’t weary of ‘gotcha’ scandal bytes. The verbiage also
implies, rather strongly, that the scene depicted in the photo did not
occur. However, after clearly illustrating his contention that the
photographer used what would more accurately be called ‘enhancements,’
the author (rather obliquely) backpedals a bit further:
“The bigger discussion, of course, is whether Gaza Burial is actually fake — or just enhanced to bring out important details.”
I agree with Julieta, who says, “…let’s focus on what’s important here, WHAT HAPPENED IN GAZA!”
Unless the author of the article wishes to state that the evidence suggests the depicted
scene did not occur as depicted (lighting notwithstanding), then this is a non-story, and we should question the editorial choice of the inflammatory term ‘faked.’

Ellis Vener

“…let’s focus on what’s important here, WHAT HAPPENED IN GAZA! that’s the whole ponit of the picture, that’s why it won, because it shows the horror of the most significant event of the year.”

What has been happening in Syria is worse. What has been happening in Iraq (and not being reported) is worse. What has been happening in Afghanistan is worse (and under reported); what has been happening in Pakistan is worse (and under reported). what has been happening throughout both East and west Africa is worse.

Why don’t we focus on that for awhile – or is this somehow “worse” in your mind because these victims are Muslim and the nation which was striking back after being repeatedly attacked is predominantly Jewish?

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” -George Santayana

Sam_Holloway

Spare me the obtuse ‘anti-Semitism’ argument. This isn’t the Atrocity Olympics, either. The photo isn’t about Syria or Afghanistan. It’s about Gaza, and about what Israel had done to the children of Gaza. The author uses language that takes a stand on the issue, so that makes it political:
“Hansen was in Gaza City when Israeli forces retaliated in response to rocket fire from Palestinian rocket fire [sic].”

This is not only grammatically garbled and biased, it is factually incomplete (to say the least).

“Israeli hawks maintain that they were provoked into the attack. But
actually Ahmad Jabari, the Hamas leader the Israelis assassinated
earlier this week, had been engaged in talks with the Israelis about a
truce. Assassinations achieved by the ruse of openness to peace talks are guarantees of no further peace talks.”

LOL…As someone who lives in a country thats been dealing with Islamic terror since the 80s, I will say this, “No terrorist wants peace with you”. If they say they do, its so that they can lower your guard and attack you later. If this is the reason you Americans support Pakistan and the terrorist “rebels” in Syria, then you’re nuts. BTW Hamas are terrorists. They fire rockets at Israeli schools. The Taliban has blown up 100 girls schools in Pakistan. As someone who grew up in Saudi Arabia (I’m not Arab), let me assure you, a dictator is better than an Islamic fundamentalist “democracy” anyday. Better you sit there, 1000s of miles away, and do what Americans do best…..be ignorant.

Advocatus

Sam Holloway: Anyone who uses Juan Cole as an objective source on the Palestinian conflict is either obtuse or willfully ignorant or both. So which one are you?

As for the picture itself: One should stop to think whether this photo, staged or not, deserved to win in the first place, seeing
as Palestinians are in the habit of parading their dead for the purposes
of the foreign media, which is a deplorable habit (whatever one thinks
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), and so any photographer worth his
salt should be able to take a shot like that.

whether Palestinians parade their dead or not is not the issue and is no ground not to allow a press photo for entry or winning. Or is winning only for portraying the right political stream?

Advocatus

Right. So whether the photo may have been doctored is “not the issue.” Whether it documents a genuine outpouring of grief among mourners or whether it shows what was essentially a staged event for the benefit of foreign journalists” is “not the issue.” So I reckon that the credibility of news photographers in general and this one in particular is “not the issue,” either.

Juan Cole, are we talking about the Juan Cole who published a photo purporting to show both a perpetrator and victim of the genocide in Darfur with the caption that since all Africans look the same to him the genocide isn’t racism? Great source to quote.

Exactly. Israel hasnt attacked in years, they’ve been putting up with muslim attacks for years and did nothing. The gaza brought this on themselves

Vadim Roizman

Actually, I think both You and Julieta miss the main point. Since none of you are not are actually in Gaza (or Homes/Baghdad/Waziristan/etc..) all you know about what HAPPENED IN GAZA from guys like Paul Hansen, from journalists and photographers. You form your opinion based on the facts they present you (and those they don’t). The emotional load of the stories, best presented in pictures and videos could be more important than numbers.
The media now more than ever has the power to shape minds of the people. That is why it’s extremely important to prevent manipulations and validate not only facts reported, but the images and videos too, since they are a powerful weapon.

CyanoBacteria

am i the only one that doesnt need an expert or some fancy computer engineering tricks to know that this was fake?

Gina

No, you’re not the only one to be fooled. The winning shot has a fake look due to over-editing, but the photo and lighting is real.

It’s pretty easy to establish a metric for an appropriate limit to manipulating a photo: does the manipulation add or remove information to the image?

Adjusting a RAW image to lighten shadows doesn’t add information, only reveals information already present in the image data. Adding parts from a different photo, or cloning parts of the same photo, adds and/or removes information. Changing someone’s eye color removes and adds information. It does get a little more complicated with things like removing a speck of dust, but doing so doesn’t substantially change the information (usually); it’s effectively manual noise removal. You’d think professionals would have this figured out by now.

sal

what doesn’t seem to be considered is was there artificial light on the scene…from TV crews
or other sources.

Your article is wrong and possibly slanderous. Nowhere does Dr. Neal Krawetz claim that “the photo itself is almost certainly a composite of three different photos, with various limbs spliced together from each of the images”. Nor is any proof offered of this. Fix this now.

Ashevillian

This looks like an HDR image… in which three (or more) exposures of the same scene are layered together. I don’t see any reason why this cannot be a perfectly legitimate journalistic tool to capture a wider gamut of information than a single exposure can: and indeed one which more closely resembles the normal human range. Sure, the resulting HDR file can produce a whole variety of different “looks” from the same data, but that’s true of single exposure images as well. Unless DIFFERENT ELEMENTS from DIFFERENT EXPOSURES were combined to create something that was not actually happening essentially simultaneously, I have no problem with it as photojournalism. But I think they way the light was handled in post was cheezy and plastic looking and utterly unsubtle.

Novice Photog

The photographer has basically said this is a pseudo HDR made from 3 adjusted versions of the original raw file. So not 3 images spliced, but certainly manipulated to bring out the detail.

Im sure this is a TIP of an ICEBERG. Israel is less evil than many people think it is

Can’t Believe It

To be fair to the photographer, there has been a HUGE leap in image processing and in sensor technology in the last two years.

Current DSLRs and the current release of Adobe Camera Raw make pulling three or four stops out of the shadows a trivial task. So his assertion that he just used normal processing is entirely within reason.

The “ELA analysis” could be correct, but it might also be something else. There is no way for the average person to judge because we don’t really know what it’s supposed to be measuring, how the analysis was done, or whether this particular process is generally recognized by other scientific experts. Since the writer couldn’t find an independent expert to verify the analysis, all we are left with is the writer’s word.

As for the XMP data, where is it?

Ian Stephens

Having worked as a media
photographer for over 40 years this is a debate that needs to be had.

Are we accurate recorders of history or interpreters
of history?

As technology has allowed greater
flexibility photographers have pushed the boundaries and it’s now leading to
the questioning of authenticity in almost every case.

Had a look at a Real Estate web
site lately? Images captured in multiple exposures and layered together to
create an effect that’s rarely close to reality.

Some would argue why limit it to one field of
photography.

In darkrooms, of course customization
of your print went on, but personally I always left the darkroom knowing that
what I was about to put my name on was a fair representation of the events I
had captured.

The question we must answer and
agree upon is “what is fair representation of the event”

Only to explain to you that before confirm the prize jury ask for the raw files.

So they can understand how you have enhanced the pictures.

Hope that this will help to better understand.

Blair Reeve

It was revealed today that Sebastian Antony, the writer of an article exposing the faked World Press photo of the year, faked his story with MS Word. A close analysis of the story has shown that no word in Antony’s piece was original: all can be found in existing articles by luminaries from as far back as Harold Ross of the New Yorker and Ring Lardner of the Chicago Tribune to modern day exemplars like Bob Herbert and Howard Kurtz. “We’ve even found collocations and short phrases consisting of three or four words which have been used by other journalists,” said Extreme Tech’s managing editor Sal Cangeloso. “Presently our team of analysts have cause to believe a whole sentence may have been lifted from somewhere in James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” but even if that turns out not to be the case we’re certain once we run a cross check against all newspaper and magazine databases we will likely find at least one, maybe two or three, pre-existing sentences.” Our reporters were able to contact Antony who made the following statement. “There’s an inherent problem when you report this story—based on your criteria, your report itself will be fake.” Chief Censor of Extreme Tech comments, Blair Reeve, suggested we prove Mr. Antony wrong by adding a made up word like axaxaxas mlo to his article to validate the integrity of his reporting.

J. LeVint III

Do you need to be a computer technician, a photoshop whiz, or a forensic scientist to see that the baby in the foreground is stiff as a board? The baby’s head should be hanging, shouldn’t it, since it has nothing to support it? The picture strongly suggests that this tragedy is something that just happened — too early for rigor mortis. It looks like the picture of the baby was cut and pasted from another photo — but maybe that’s just me.

ErikaPM

Yes! Thats just you! That Child in the Picture is dead! Taste the that sentence a few times and read after me. That poor dead Childs head is resting on his fathers arm. Can’t you see that?

1. If we go down this slidey road wouldn’t we have to check all past entries for similar issues?
2. This emphasis on “real, undoctored” images has the very real danger of converting photo journalists into adrenaline junky, extreme danger seeking maniacs?

dtnelson66

Things like dodging and burning are an integral part of photography. The image is not complete until it is printed. What was traditionally done with an enlarger in a dark room is now done in the computer using software like Photoshop. Dodging a photo is not only acceptable, it is expected as a part of creating the photograph. Digitally cropping pieces of several images together into a single image, while perfectly fine for art photography and even some editorial work, would be grounds for disqualification for a competition like this.

Yoda

The article is a bit misleading. Insinuating that multiple images were combined, yet only showing *some* proof of aggressive highlight/shadow adjustments. It does have HDR qualities – which are prone to criticism. But to call the photo “fake” is a bit too much.

VirtualMark

Read again, it says how the history shows that images were added.

Yoda

Yes, the history shows that images were added, yet the ELA analysis and visual proof provided, only show signs of “digital illumination”. Where exactly were they “added” ?

VirtualMark

That’s a good point – it could have been multiple exposures added. Which as you say is how you create an HDR image.

He should be made to provide the original files and the photoshop project, then we’d know for sure.

Still, I agree with the comments that the photo looks fake. The lighting just looks a bit too enhanced to me, like it’s a poster for a movie or something.

Mountain Man

The problem with the HDR theory is that it requires multiple identical images that differ only in exposure. Judging by the photo, the photographer was at the head of a group moving down an alley, so capturing multiple identical images would have been impossible. Even if the group was standing still, it would be extremely unlikely that the facial expressions and body positions would be identical between exposures (unless the photo was staged). I suppose it’s possible that the photographer achieved the HDR look by taking the heads from one photo and pasting them into the other, but that would obviously be a clear violation of the contest rules.

Yoda

I’m thinking that at 6 fps his bracketed photos must have been pretty close. He possibly either stacked them entirely or left out parts that didn’t match or just stacked specific portions (“the heads” as you say, or maybe just other parts). That’s if we believe the author that other images were involved. Otherwise, dodging/burning could have done the trick by itself. Heck, you can create an HDR image from a single RAW file, if you want.

In any case, re-examination of the original file should lead to some conclusion.

The main focus should lay on WHAT HAPPENED IN GAZA!, as julieta says right. But IF the picture is composed from different other pictures, it’s no longer photography! All other manipulations are to be discussed, but still leave the picture a photograph.

Sebastian appears to have increased both the colour saturation and the contrast of the image in order to illustrate his claims… There’s an irony hidden somewhere around here, but I’m too tired to find it.

When I first read the title of the article I was shocked and wanted to read through to see how it was”faked” but after reading through the whole article I had strong doubts about the intention of the writer and the way he wrote the article giving the reader strong indications about the faking part and strong allegations against the photographer accusing him with adding elements but at the end the writers strongest analysis was the part of dodging the faces and “magical light” which has nothing to do at all with faking a photo! Burning and dodging has been used from the early days of inventing photo printing as you know and there is nothing wrong with it. Some photographers are good at it and some do bad job with it.
If we all agree that the incident happened and that attack indeed took place at the time and place, and those children were indeed killed then calling this photo a “fake” one will just take you to a different level of judging or thinking about the photo and the topic of the photo which is not the case at all!
As long as the writer can not prove that what he meant by Fake was the fact that the photographer “Added or deleted” elements in hi photograph, any other adjustment for light or shadows can not be called as Faked! The photographer may have done a bad job in adjusting light or enhancing shadow or even getting rid of noise in a strong way but still no one can call a photo FAKED because of that! So i think the writer better come up with something to prove his strong allegations other wise it’s the writer who should loose his credibility for false accusations.

just came across this comparison of this photo and an earlier version published in Nov.

This is to prove the unjustified allegations of the writer and the guy who analysed it that the photo being faked and elements were added.
In my opinion the photographer did a poor job in adjusting light and desaturating the original photo but by no means that photo can be described as fake.

We sometimes forget that the photographer has been manipulated by what he thinks will pass for a great image in today’s digital era…. the judges where obviously looking for something like this as it won…. So was the photographer wrong to manipulate the image for the purpose of winning the competition? I think not… was the photographer wrong for manipulating the image to make it more aesthetically pleasing? I think not again…. Did the photographer manipulate the audience with regard the essence of the photograph? No… it still remains a powerful image. So in fact the only thing he has done wrong is do some pretty shabby editing to be honest…. those power lines are just inexcusable and for the judges not to have seen this well….. it just proves that the power and impact of the moment was not lost through the manipulations…. On a final note its a fine line we draw between reality and perceived reality and we have to rely on the individual and there ethical responsibility to provide an accurate impression of what happened at the time of shutter release its sometimes easier to take one sensationalist image than ten which portray reality…… the question you have to ask yourself is which one would you take!!!

Rotem

The factual truth doesn’t have any meaning these days. Only what gets the highest number of “Likes”.

MindDrift

This is not a case of magic light. Your shadow analysis is simply incomplete. If the sun is indeed low, the wall on the right of the image should be blocking sunlight from directly shining on the faces of the people gathered in this alley. Instead, their faces are mostly illuminated by light that is reflected off the left wall. And that is what we see here.

It would only be magic if light could travel through walls.

Lisa MK

It is my opinion that if you are submitting a photo to a competition then it should be left untouched, because, even if it´s dark it shows the moment it was captured and the atmosphere at the time. For a later exhibition the photo can be retouched but only to enhance it slightly, not alter it altogether. A photograph is a moment and nobody can experience what the photographer and photography isn´t about trying to convey an image as the human eye would.

What exactly does this proof? The alleged “slicing” and the only new thing that is brought up here happened, according to this analysis, months AFTER the image was published. Also, this version was published in print (!) one day after it was taken. That would give him only a few hours to do a sophisticated photoshop job in a challenging and stressful environment. The only thing that ELA and the (faulty) shadow analysis proof is that he dodged and burned the image. Who would have thought…

Ali Johnston

I have not read the rules for photo submission, but it looks like they may be that no manipulation may take place. If that’s the rules, then to do do anything outwith is cheating, no matter how you dress it up.
It’s still a powerful image

Sue

I haven’t read any good evidence now, though I have to agree that some parts make me wonder. Well, fact is, we don’t know what is lightening them up from the left that hard. Maybe there really is (!) a bright, white wall. We simply don’t know. To scream “FAKE!!1” doesn’t help anyone. Well except the author getting clicks. Still something on the guy far left makes me wonder. And the one behind him (the one nearer to the wall looking down and crying) doesn’t fit in again. In fact there are many guys who’s lightning from the left makes me curious. Some seem pretty grey and boring, others seem to have a sun next to their head.

If he did not adhere to the rules of the competition, then it should be excluded. But regarding this whole FAKE thing, just look up Frank Hurley and see how he printed composite images from multiple negatives whist recording Shackeltons Antarctic adventure in 1914-1916. Nothing is new….

Perhaps WPP entries should be submitted as they were originally filed to their respective agency / publication.

Roberto Tomás

you don’t really make clear that the additional images he loaded were for HDR-style compositing **of the background** — it makes it sound like the people in the scene come from different events and never saw each other, and I thought that was something they specifically denied.

It is quite common to use 3 versions of a RAW picture to enhance light in different parts of a picture. Why has a journalistic Photo to be dull in light and colors? I don’t see this as manipulation, but enhancing for quality.

An XMP file would NEVER TELL YOU it was different images. The ONLY thing an XMP file can tell you is if the original RAW file was opened THREE DIFFERENT TIMES… Which is exactly what happened here. It’s the same image 3 times just like Bilbo Berlin said.

justinburch505

Don’t forget a number of the dead blamed on Israeli rockets in fact died from rockets the terrorists were aiming at Israel but went astray, including the child in that famous shot of the little dead boy held by Morsi.

People would rather pretend the muslims are innocent even though theyre the instigators

Mark Scholtens

One superficial look at this picture is enough to conclude eighter the scene was staged or the picture got edited. I suppose this being the reason why this picture was awarded the price. What does not serve the Palestine cause well.

Liberal Hater

Of course it was staged. Palestinians are masters at staging BS to make the libs swoon.

Tim Boy

Of course this picture has been moderated with photoshop, that was the one thing I noticed after seeing it for the first time.

Buty does it matter? I don’t think so, unless he would have photoshopped the deceased children into the picture, that would be fraud.

I think this is fine, but who am I.

Becka J Morton

Have we become so disgustingly insensitive, that we are arguing about photoshop, on a picture of children’s corpses.

What the hell is wrong with you people

Mark Scholtens

We should be. The miserable situation of the Palestines is downplayed systematically. Awarding an obviously fake image with a price does not add justice, but only self-comfort to the West.

It was a competition for an award and he cheated so what’s to comment?

Andreas

Sebastian. You are doing nothing else but enhance all the hear say and rumours there are out there. If he did embed several pictures in the same frame, that is of course not okay. but enhancing light is something that has been done always in the darkroom. And photojournalism should not be objective. And the fact that you state that most would agree that it should be objective shows your lack of insight. I would like my photographers to take a stand in their photographs and show how they percieved a certain situation.
Like when journalists put a specific angle on their story. Same thing.
And you mention trusted software that is free online, that could check the photo. i would not trust such software. And please give WP some credit, they have dealt with this kind of thing before. Let him submit his photo until then you serve no one but yourself with half theories and rumours.

how do you know it’s a true event? Pallywood folks can manage such stituations any time any place.

Tobin Lush

All photography is a fabrication

Eddie_Baby

That picture doesn’t look real. Fake but accurate.

Michael Babbitt

More pro-Palestinian propaganda exposed. If you cannot tell the truth, just make it up and the gullible in the world – vast majority – wil believe it. Maybe they should have photoshoppped the body parts of Israeli pizza goers or bus bombing victims in to show the other side.

Oh, please, stop your grandstanding. He messed with the *lighting*
to make the content of the image clearer to see, to make it a more striking and
appealing image. Whatever your views on whether that’s an acceptable
manipulation for a press photo, you can’t argue that it constitutes propaganda;
the events depicted are entirely unchanged. But don’t let the facts of this
photography debate stop you from making a cheap and irrelevant political point.

I’m perfectly aware of the definition of propaganda. Furthermore, in the absence of any evidence that the motivation of the photographer or the World Press Photo of the Year organisation for shooting/promoting this image is anyhing other than a dedication to excellence in reportage and/or photography, this isn’t propaganda.

To be fair, Bill Owen didn’t say that Israel was responsible, merely that the events depicted in the image did actually happen, which as far as we can tell is true, and which Michael Babbit claimed is not the case.

Let me put my objection to your ridiculous comment another way. How is this image not “the truth” (beyond superficial appearances)? How was it “made up” (beyond superficial appearances)? What it is about this image that we should not believe (other than the slightly unreal light)?

Jizz Lee

One of the kids is trying not to laugh.

pjsx

if it’s been manipulated, it’s an art piece. journalists should never manipulate

CygnusA81

Typical Pollywood and their Western enablers lying about the conflict.

I will admit on thing, I had a typo to use an ‘a’ instead of an ‘o.’ There are you happy now?

Benito Aramando

More so… thanks for the clarification. Pallywood isn’t a term I’ve come across before. Still doesn’t justify your comment, though. The photographer has been pretty much proven to have undertaken significant photo manipulation, but not to have fabricated the essential subject matter.

kenroyall

The photo was chosen for its political implications so obviously the judges weren’t too concerned about the authenticity. Next case.

jakee308

Sure they can make “adjustments” and they can even win an award for it. But only if they’ve acknowledged what they did to enhance the photo.

See if this was an award for “journalism” then maybe okay but this was an award for Photography.

d1stewart

From this composite of three images with additional manipulation, I can tell that the Palestinians mourn the children they use as human shields killed by Israeli responses to terrorist attacks more than Israelis mourn their children killed by Palestinian terrorists launching missile attacks toward schools, buses, hospitals, and neighborhoods, invading homes and slaughtering, or suicide-bombing buses and restaurants.

Why aren’t photos of Israelis’ funerals featured as news stories and prize submission photos? Other than the obvious manipulation that Palestinians use, carrying their dead children through the streets exposed for photographers.

Mountain Man

I’m not sure how this ever fooled anybody since it looks phony at first glance. Even without detailed pixel level analysis, it’s obvious that the faces are unnaturally brighter than the ambient light to the point that some of them almost look pasted on.

That’s called HDR, and has always been acceptable in press photography, even when it was done with film negatives.

Mountain Man

Yeah, there was a lot more manipulation than just HDR.

waleeper

Fake would imply that he added people or combined two burials. Manipulating the lighting is considered standard practice and always has been since the dawn of photography (it is still call post or post processing in a throwback to the days when you did it in the darkroom during developing)

Faking or over manipulation is when people are made skinnier, or in some cases bigger. Another “fake” would be adding or removing clothing. The case where smoke was added to a press photo comes to mind as an example un acceptable faking.

The article doesn’t show any of that, nor does it show any proof this is a composite of images. BTW HDR photography is the combination of 3 or possibly more images to bring out depth or color. It becoming quite popular today and even that might have been acceptable if the photo was identified as HDR, but even that case isn’t made here.

Much to do about nothing.

guest

From my quick perusal of the comments, it seems that folks are missing the point. The reason it is considered “faked” isn’t *only* because he modified the image, but that he presented the image as an accurate portrayal of what happened at that moment-which is probably one of the criteria from the contests guidelines.
There is nothing wrong with the fact that he modified the image, it would then just be considered a different form of art than the journalistic photography that was called for in this competition.
Its all about context.

It’s actually not fake – this is what happened at the moment. WPP people have said that it is not fake.

Farin

the event still happened, it isn’t fake, it is still relaying a message. I understand the rules and stipulations of photo journalism and keeping the photo as real and raw as possible is suppose to happen but this picture speaks a millions words still.

Farin

we get so lost in the technicalities of things now and days. the real reason this photo was taken was to show a part of world history.

gregusmeus

Problem being if the ‘million words’ being spoken aren’t actually true. In this case no one is denying the funeral took place, but other photographs in other contexts… photo journalism photos shouldn’t be faked. Or if you do ‘enhance’ them, don’t call it journalism, call it art.

I’m sure everyone is saying this, but to me it really looked heavily edited as soon as I saw the pic. I don’t know enough to point out what was wrong (and this article was very interesting) but it didn’t sit well with me as soon as I saw it. My brain can only pick out the fact that things look too perfect and staged. The people are real, so it had to be lighting or perspectives that were off. But again, I couldn’t really decide what.

As for editing, photography is weird. The art of spotting a moment and taking the photo would suggest a requirement that no editing takes place. It’s about having the eye for the shot, and the timing, and how you frame the image. But I do think that editing a photograph or using the camera’s settings to their most is an art form in itself. So I have no issue with photography being one way or the other, I just think that for competitions it should be stated what is and isn’t allowed.

duggulous

Even with the “softened language” this article is misleading. Using terms like “spliced in”, “faked” and “composite” suggest that the photographer cut and pasted different scenes together, adding objects that weren’t there. But the image analysis gives no evidence that that the photographer did anything other than manipulate the lighting and sharpness. It’s entirely likely that the “three images” all came from the same frame, and that the photographer merely imported the same raw image into Photoshop 3 times, at 3 different brightness levels in order to lighten or darken areas of the image.

While we’re examining the standards for photojournalism we might want to take a look at print journalism as well…

I know Paul Hansen. I worked with him. He is a great guy and photographer.
There is no chance Paul has put pictures together.
He doesn’t do that.
We can all see that some dodging has been used. And we all have done that in the darkroom and in Photoshop.

For me great photography is about capturing the light, if you effectively have to change so much – use 3 raw files – you just didn’t capture the light… which means you didn’t make a great photograph.. Pity, but I have to say the photo looked fake to me immediately, it doesn’t look at all like something I – We could see in reality..

You don’t understand RAW, then. This person probably didn’t have to use 3 RAW files. RAW files have enough data, if you shoot a good exposure the first time, to make 3 separate JPEGs out of them with 3 very different exposures… More than enough to do an HDR.

No, the photo of the year was simply balanced for tonal range using HDR techniques, which people have done for decades (even done in film). It would, yes, involve splicing several images together… But only in so far as they are actually the SAME image from the SAME RAW file, simply given different adjustments before being opened and saved as a JPEG.

neilk

Adjusting dark and light levels used to be a totally normal part of developing photos. I suspect it still is, when Palestinian subjects are not involved.

David R.

I find the story headline to be pretty troublesome.”Photo of the Year was Faked with Photoshop” one might argue gives the impression that the story itself was falsified. This is still a story about a child’s funeral in Gaza.

brendak

Um, is it possible that the photographer was simply employing HDR (High Dynamic Range) enhancement? Yes, it is. That’s not modification, it’s a valid technique that is gaining in popularity every day. This is a non-story.

Sorry, but the “analysis” is bullshit, there is no proof of it being a composition. Yes, faces are probably dodged and sharpening is probably applied, but that has been done to news photographs since … forever without them being deemed art. Using multiple layers of the same image can also used to bring out details, also a practice that directly corresponds to techniques used by film photographers for years.

Personally I think dodging is overused in this picture which is why I do not like it, but there is no evidence (yet at least) that it is fake.

Frank

I’m pretty sure the shadows show that this has been mosaiced from multiple shots. Along with the entire ambiance of the photo just looks fake. To me, the lighting is so much that it even looks staged.

PelleKalle

I agree that it looks weird, but I would say that has to do with the dodging giving the illusion of (or enhancing faint but existing) light sources. Shadows are extremely hard to predict in a complex environment like this which is why I question the analysis. It’s tendentious and sounds too much like the people questioning the moon landing to me.

The lighting, to me, appears as if this image is an HDR composition. It is very possible to use one image to pull this off. You’d open it in ACR and get one set of adjustments, open and save as a JPEG. You’d then open it in ACR again, use different settings and repeat. In the end, you should have 3+ images with different highlight and shadow depth. When you merge them into an HDR, you can get a kinda glowing, haunted look to the lighting in any photo taken in a dark area… And skin tones almost always look like they do here.

govind

Would it be wrong to assume that the Israeli Govt sponsored the “hunt-and-kill” party against Hansen?

123

The only thing on trial here is the integrity of publications like ExtremeTech. The single piece of evidence being presented as “proof” of the image being “faked” is two entries in the file showing that image was converted on November 20, 2012 and then again on January 4, 2013. The problem is that the image was, like you would expect, published on the front page of the Swedish newspaper “Dagens Nyheter” on November 21, 2012 [1]. Nullifiying any type of “proof” based on the entry at January 4, 2013. So now you have zero proof and only accusations of too much retouching, something that the industry was already debating two months ago when the winner was announced [2][3].

I get the error in splicing images but what I fail to get worked up about is adjusting the exposure. I worked in the newspaper industry as a photojournalist before and after the advent of digital and we always adjusted for exposure. Burning and dodging was done to almost every image. Why are you making such a big deal about the parts of this image that were exposure adjusted? I’m with you on the splicing of the image and how that is completely wrong for journalism.

“Neal Krawetz” – and the religion believes of the revelator is …
I remember the time when the photo was rewarded, ppl from Israel were so furious and even then there were comments about its falsity. The photo may be fake but your beastialities in Gaza are real as hell ! I hope Iran nuke you soon.

Astonishing article. I hope that the author and website are sued for all the ridiculous and outrageous allegations of composite images and faking the image. I would suggest that gamers and technology writers write about their speciality and not about photojournalism, disrespecting the judges in the competition or the integrity of the photojournalist in question. For anyone actually interested in the truth about the image, you should read the official World Press Photo comment: http://www.worldpressphoto.org/news/digital-photography-experts-confirm-integrity-paul-hansen’s-image-files I look forward to this article being corrected.

sympatikos

Photojournalists are assigned the task of presenting a visual fact that tells the story. But photographers have always used every skill in their tool kit to enhance the impact of the picture. W. Eugene Smith spent a week or longer in the darkroom on a single image. And was notorious for bleaching his pictures to add impact and probably highlights where there were none of the film. Is anyone going to retract any of his awards ?

This picture presents the visual fact and tells the story in a compelling way. No basic facts were changed. I have no problem with it, except that perhaps the photographer was trying to conceal his method. Same as W. Eugene Smith and many others did.

crosspatch

True, but completely beside the port. This is a photographic award, not an artistic creativity award. This isn’t a contest to see who can doctor photographs for most dramatic effect. Or at least it wasn’t until now. Anyone is in the right place at the right time to take a crappy photo. Those magical photos happen only once in a while. It is luck more than anything else. This has now become a contest of who can create the best scene with their computer that is based on a photograph.

sympatikos

I see a distinction between a photographic award and a photojournalism award. I see no such distinction between a photographic award and an artistic creativity award.

I would be interested to see the other pictures that were finalists for this award and compare whether the stories they told had the impact of this one. Maybe someone else should have gotten it for an almost equally strong picture with less controversial Photoshop work.

But I still say this picture tells the story in a powerful way without any distortion of the facts.

It would appear this article is a bunch of malarkey. Here are the results of WPP’s own forensic investigation of the image in an article published by the National Press Photographers Association: https://nppa.org/node/61860

Forensic experts do sometimes disagree, but WPP’s experts appear more well-credentialed than ExtremeTech’s. For instance, ET recommended WPP use Four and Six’s FourMatch software… Instead, they got Four and Six’s CEO and CTO to conduct the analysis personally (including reviewing the original RAW file, which ET didn’t have access to).

Shame on ZD for sinking to this level. Perhaps ExtremeTech is trying to reinvent itself as the technology news equivalent of the New York Post.

schichtarbeiter

Krawetz doesn’t obviously know anything about digital pictures. How can he look at the xmp block of a 1600x1200px JPEG and take this for the original file, altered by Hansen for the last time? It could be altered by anyone in the chain.
Just Google his name and see what kind of expert he is. But better take your tinfoil hat off for that.

I would have a lot more problem with this picture if I thought it were posed, as we now know so many well-known pictures have been. And then presented by photojournalists as if they just happened upon the scene and caught the great image. Rather than constructing a point of view.

Some changes to enhance lighting is no different than thousands of other great pictures using darkroom techniques. And going back probably more than a century.

The fact that this obviously not posed, could not be posed, makes it a powerful picture.

I will say this picture is fake the day they prove the kids are alive. Are they alive?

Darkieee

The verdict is in, the image is NOT a fake. Two independent experts have confirmed the pictures integrity. Their verdict is that it’s not a composite image.

PaulJay

Stop crying so much.
Dodging and burning is a darkroom technique.
You know. How they did it before photoshop.
These kind of bloggers are most childish and frustraded kind.
Hey Blogger. Where is your war time portfolio?

XMP files don’t really work like that. I say this as a photographer. The XMP file is relative to the original RAW file and that is it. The original was opened up and saved as JPG. If anything was spliced to that, the XMP file would never reflect it.

FURTHERMORE, this never mentions WHAT was spliced. Perhaps the RAW file was opened several times with different settings in an attempt to make an HDR final product. It would still be one shot, but several different variations in tone, brightness, and contrast. That would not violate any rules of the contest, and it WOULD still be “splicing three images together”, in technical terms (even though they’d be the same image, just with some different level adjustments).

PaulJay

I converted the picture to black and white, but thats fake and not real because when i took the picture all the people were in color!!!
Fake!!!
Sarkasm off.

The presense of the “original” RAW file does not prove anything; the RAW file can be faked as well.
You can combine several images and save them back to the RAW. The fact that Photoshop does not allow you to save RAW files does not mean that you cannot do this with other software.

This discussion is ove … same image, HDR, completely allowed by the contest rules.
Its a ‘press photo’ contest, not ‘print photo journalism’ contest.

Eduard de Kam, an expert in the Netherlands who scrutinized the image:

“When I compare the RAW file with the prizewinning version
I can indeed see that there has been a fair amount of post-production,
in the sense that some areas have been made lighter and others darker.
But regarding the positions of each pixel, all of them are exactly in
the same place in the JPEG (the prizewinning image) as they are in the
RAW file. I would therefore rule out any question of a composite image.”

You can not alter a RAW file and resave it as an out of camera RAW file, the XMP is needed to retain the alterations, without the XMP, there is only the out of camera RAW.

Film photographers manipulate final photos from negatives using enlarger exposure time selection, cropping, dodging, burning, developer dilution, time in developer, etc. And even multiple negative printing from bracketed shooting (rarer than with digital, because manual registration is much more tedious, but it is possible for some shots — I’ve done it).

Adding elements to the photo would be a disqualifying act, but I don’t see evidence of that in the above analysis. (And by the way, you can do that kind of compositing with film either with a specialized optical printer setup, or in the enlarger — though it is difficult and time consuming.)

Photoshop just makes all that easier, and digital shooting removes the negative scanning step.

Unless the contest required unretouched negatives when it was a film contest, then requiring the shooting RAW is unfair. But if the rule is no retouching whatsoever, so be it. The contest has the right for that to be the rule and to strip the award if it’s not adhered to. I think it’s a stupid rule — better to specify what manipulations is legit such as lightening and darkening (with or without masks), etc. — but it’s their contest.

And by the way, no camera (digital or film) ever made records the scene exactly as the photographer’s eye saw it. In fact your eyes (and brain) versus mine will see the scene slightly differently even if we could be in exactly the same place at the same time. And cameras have various settings on-board. Is framing, racking focus, changing f-stop, changing ISO, using a flash, etc. “cheating”? Those are not “objective” decisions — they are subjective, based on how the photographer wants the picture to look. Those things will lighten, darken, change focus, etc. away from not just how the photographer’s human eye saw the scene, but the baseline of how the sensor or stock will record it.

The idea that photography is or ever has been wholly objective is utterly naive.

BART SIMPSONSSON

Yes but the subject matter of the photograph is so important (the evil JOOOOOS) that the ends justify the means. It was for a much higher purpose–further vilification of the hateful, Arab-baby-eating, warlike, squatters of the state of Israel—the JOOOOOS.

nickshaw

Exactly. It’s not so much that the photo may or may not be faked or altered, it’s more “Look What The Joooos Did!™”
It wouldn’t even be an issue if the Punkastinians stopped firing random rockets into Israel from behind women skirts and children’s playgrounds.

schichtarbeiter

Extremetech, I think your article is an extreme fail. The ‘expert’ you mention did a horrible job, and you even did not get those wrong assumptions right.

Dis Custard

Sebastian Anthony – this is the sleaziest journalistic headline grabber I have seen since Fox news had “Osama and Saddam.. Partners in crime ? Find out at 11”

As I see – lighting may come
bounced from white window blinds (there is another WHITE blind in
background). NOTHING magical. It could also be simple flash bounced off
wall (no white wall required in this case).

So allegations are ridiculous. Those “forensic” specialist probably never took a single photograph..

Now that you got the proof that the picture was not “faked” as you still state in the title – could you call back those 2149 Tweets and those other likes, shares and diggs? No? Are you ready to get sued?

njh

What a sensationalist headline for an assertion that has yet to be proven! The article shows no reason to claim the foto is ‘faked’. The entire tone of the article is sensationalist.

The discussion @ the role of ‘objectivity’ in news photography is superficial & misleading. The writer has no knowledge of the history of news photography. WPPY rules might differ, but what I read in the article doesn’t sound like it goes against accepted journalistic practice.

Accusing someone of faking a news photo is a serious thing. It can permanently harm the photographer’s livelihood & reputation. It needs more info than this writer has presented

“But regarding the positions of each pixel, all of them are exactly in the same place in the JPEG (the prizewinning image) as they are in the RAW file. I would therefore rule out any question of a composite image.” – Eduard de Kam, digital photography expert NIDF (Nederlands Instituut voor Digitale Fotografie)

The more the press prints these disgusting Palestinian propaganda photographs, the more children they will coral at legitimate targets for Israeli defensive fire in response to PLO and Hamas terrorist attacks.

World Press photo of the year? Are you kidding me? Who are these fools enabling Palestinian terror?

Quote from NPR article:
——–
“It is clear that the published photo was retouched with respect to
both global and local color and tone. Beyond this, however, we find no
evidence of significant photo manipulation or compositing,” said
computer science professor Hany Farid of Dartmouth College who studied
the image with his co-founder of Fourandsix Technologies, Kevin Connor.

Yes, the light levels were altered, but this is the same concept as used by film photography. BUT – it was a single photo, not three.

This site owes an apology to the photographer. This site has opened itself to a libel suit.

Can’t Believe It

You people are forgetting that the human eye can see into shadows and bright areas at least twice as well as even the best camera, so the idea that a camera can reproduce what you see is incorrect.
All you can do with a camera—especially in a scene with harsh light– is approximate a part of the scene, whether you bring up the darker areas or pull back the brighter areas, you have to make a decision on what you’re going to make visible. It’s always been that way and will continue that way for the near future.

Note the latest update to this article starts with a statement from an “independent expert in the field of image forensics,” Hany Farid, who compared the original RAW file to the JPEG submitted for the contest and found “all of [the pixels] are exactly in the same place.” This seems to contradict the idea of any fraud, stitching together different photographs, fakery or undue manipulation. Note that no one is claiming any person or object in the photo was inserted or changed in any way except for lighting. I vividly remember watching photographers at work in old darkrooms vigorously rubbing portions of an image to make it glow and, years later, watching photo editors use dodging tools and other tricks to change the lighting of a photograph. And what about producing a black-and-white photo from a color negative? What would that be? I’m just afraid this is very much overblown.

Absolutely amazing, all this analysis over one nearly meaningless photograph, and not one bit of analysis over Obama’s two forged Birth Certificates.

Carl Seibert

Here’s a cheering thought: In some countries, libel is a criminal expense, which means that blog-o-blowhards who don’t contribute to society, but feel free to “analyze” the efforts of those who do can still pay for their transgressions, not by handing over money they don’t have, but by doing time in prison. :-) :-) Hmmm. A quick check of the footer suggests that this blog is owned by a big media corporation that can foot the bill for the judgement. Oh well. I guess that could be viewed as better for the victim. I hope he goes for it. This kind of reckless blog bloviation is one of the great annoyances of our day. Shame on Ziff Davis.

By now it has become obvious that the “forensics” employed here were complete bullshit. Of course they were. They always are. The owners of this blog knew that before they published. That’s an element of libel, if you’re keeping score. (Unless they invoke a stupidity defense, which is always fun in its own right).

And then there is the matter of taste, of whether or not this photographer has heavy-handed in his processing of the picture, rendering it too beautiful. That’s a legitimate argument that
has been going on in art since at least the Renaissance, probably since people were chipping stick figures in the walls of caves. Personally, I like the photo. It might be a bit much for day to day use by a news organization. Maybe. If it was to go print on newsprint, it would lose much of that painterly quality. But for a contest? Certainly, I’d place it within the bounds of good taste. My taste. Yours may differ. And I’m always up for giving props to people in any trade who care about craftsmanship. (As a matter of fact, I wrote a memo a couple hours ago about some photographers who could use a dose of Hansen’s sensibilities on that score. While were on that subject, yes, I edit news photos for a living. I do have some skin in the game. If someone does fake a picture and it gets by me, I’m in a world of hurt. I’m not exactly soft on the subject.)

So there you have it. After we get past the mud slinging baloney and “expert internet analysis”, it all comes down to whether you like the style or not. If you’re a newspaper reader in Sweden, you can vote at the corner news vendor.

pluto planet

So Paul Hansen didn’t lie. This is now picture of the year by the World Press Photo. and picture has not been modified or faked by photoshop. Actually it was Neal Krawetz who attempted to use Extreme tech magazine for political reasons to downplay tragedy in Gaza. Shameful. Ill take a wild guess of what ethnicity Mr. Neal is. How about leaving tech magazines to tech issues.

The image doesn’t look like it has gone through a lot of manipulation. IMHO, it’s only the pixel level tonal enhancement (brightness, selective exposure ups, midtones up, sharpening, etc.) I think they are pretty much within the competition rules. It is fair as he has not racked up three different exposures/images to make a composite. He might have used three versions of -1, 0, and +1 exposures of the same image to make a better one to tell the story. Let’s wait for the jury’s response and his original image :-) In any case, he has done a great job of being there at the right time and using his skills to be in front of the event and photograph the story. With all respect to fellow competitors in the run up, Dani Gorgon.

this article doesn’t make sense. it starts off with evidence from wordpress that its not fake and that they analysed the image against the RAW image. Then the article concludes that its a fake because the photographer didn’t provide the raw image.

Thomas Alleman

Near the end of this article, your writer wonders, rhetorically, whether the enhancement of this photograph is sufficient to call it a fake. His last couple graphs continue in the Socratic spirit of that ambivalence. Yet the headline is very clear that the picture is a fake. It seems very much as though your copy editor has “enhanced” the actual facts of the case, and “faked” the truth of the matter…

This is a disgrace, not only is this piece blatant link bait, it lifted almost entirely from the ELA dudes website.

Magical light rays? Are you serious, get a clue- Here’s a hint, *everything* is reflective. If you can see it, it is reflective.

This is pretty clearly a case of one RAW file being processed multiple times for different ranges of dynamics, its a perfectly acceptable practice, is increasingly common and has been done in all forms of photography since Ansel Adams. Shame on ExtremeTech for publishing something for which they clearly have little to no insight in to.

The ELA actually proves this point directly; different push/pulls from one file will exhibit different noise, which would give *exactly* this result under ELA.

I don’t ‘like’ the look of this technique but it is valid none-the-less.

I can’t be bothered explaining the process because it is so simple and really the burden of proof lies with the accuser.

But then again, what would I know, I’ve only been in the industry for years and have first hand experience processing files for National Geographic.

Paul Hansen was obviously using a do-it-yourself version of low-fi HDR. I do this all the time. You process the RAW file once for (let’s say) contrast in the shadows, then again for detail in the highlights, then again for overall exposure. Then you select the best portions of each file and cut-and-paste those areas into a final composite. The content isn’t changed or altered by a single pixel; one is simply bringing out everything that the RAW file has to offer. I used to do this in the darkroom, using polycontrast papers and filters: expose the paper once with a high-contrast (#5) filter and yet again with the very low-contrast #0 or #1 filter, dodging out areas that wouldn’t benefit from the flat grays of that second exposure. Then you burn in where necessary, using either of those two filters. (Mostly using the #5.) All you’re doing is creating the best-possible local contrast throughout the print—but you’re doing it with multiple exposures and different filters. Just like Paul Hansen did with his marriage of those three seperately-processed RAW files. If the World Press rules don’t specifically prohibit that, then I believe they have nothing to hold against him. Frankly, this is much ado about absolutely nothing, I believe…

the photo is indeed too perfect, regardless it won first place due to political reasons. This picture could be taken anywhere in the middle east,(there is violence in Iraq in Syria in Afganistan) since it has the name Gaza on it, it becomes glorified.

Tiny Tim

This fraudulent pseudo academic rubbish article, has unfortunately (as expected) only managed to attract a brood of hasbara trolls. Like bluebottles to a fresh pile of excrement. As per usual vainly, defending the indefensible… It’s a picture of dead babies, you heartless canker blossoms.

heapologiatoutimotheou

And parading those dead babies while a renowned photoshopper manipulates peoples’ emotions is somehow OK? Lots of Palestinians rejoice over dead babies: fewer mouths to feed and more fodder for their propaganda machine. Granted they’d prefer dead Israeli babies. Of course if they’d stop rocketing Israel and hiding their launchers among civilians, Palestinian babies would also stop dying.

Tiny Tim

Oh I am sorry… I didn’t notice they were” rejoicing”! Silly me, I thought they looked shattered, and heartbroken. Propaganda, may be the first thing on your mind, to me it simply looks like people who realize that they will never see their children again.

As a photographer I can sympathize with both sides of this argument. There is no doubt that journalism has become more about getting a visceral reaction from viewers/readers than ever before – mostly because there is so much more competition for eyeballs — and these days everyone with an instagram account thinks they are a photojournalist (and unfortunately for those of us who really are, they have the tools
to make pics that look spectacular with the click of a button). However, as a writer I urge caution against implying that “emotionalizing” news with the devices at our disposal always devalues it. Print journalists regularly use literary devices — narrative,
anecdote, etc. – and/or emotionally engaging headlines to make their
stories “pop”. We decide what quotes to pull out as pull-quotes in a magazine piece. We cut quotes from different parts of interviews (would anyone argue the only truthful way to present an interview is to publish the full transcript?) And we use catchy ledes to draw readers in. Readers trust that we are using good judgment. And obvious sensationalism is scorned by discerning consumers. The test should be whether the image or story accurately represents the truth on the ground and that whatever dramatic effect the reporter uses to tell the story is not gratuitous, but actually adds to the story in a way that enlightens the reader/viewer to a reality to which he or she is not personally privy. For print journalists as least, drama is regularly a part of this process. Does starting a story about immigration policy with an emotionally charged lede about a man crossing the border at night in the rain with his five year old son somehow undermine the seriousness of the topic? Probably not. I guess it’s up to each person to determine their threshold for what is gratuitous and what is not. But professional journalists can usually spot the line a mile away. I’m not sure this photog crossed it. Is the second image more dramatic? Definitely. But the essential truth is the same. A blanket proscription against a photojournalist using dramatic effect when print journalists do so regularly is not fair in my book.

ragething

seems like an odd thing for a tech site to suddenly pick up on. very odd indeed. I wonder who runs this site? It just seems that there might be more to it than “guy wins prize for fake photo”. Could it be what the photo represents?

Holy cow. Really?? Photographers have been tweaking their work like this (it’s called contrast, dodging, burning) since photography was invented. Ansel Adams, Eugene Smith, James Nachtwey…everyone. Period. End of story. All the detail you see in the image was in the file, just like all the details you saw in older images were in the negatives back in the day. Ya’all really, really need to get a life. Seriously. Get outside. Take some photographs of your own. Maybe have 1/10th the impact on the world that this and other photojournalists have in the course of their work. That’d be cool.

Its just enhanced a little with Photoshop. We’re not talking adding another dead child into the scene! In the old days before Photoshop people used darkroom printing techniques to improve images, this case is the same, it should not be contested.

Ridiculous to call this image a “fake’. Photographs have always been ‘manipulated’. Enhancing an image does not make it fake, post production in the form of photoshop or a darkroom comprise a big part of the photographic process and always have been.
If this image was comprised of several images composited together to create a scene that never happened then that could legitimately be called a ‘fake’. This clearly not the case.

The “shadow analysis” pure bs. Just compare the first published picture with the one that has all those bogus arrows all over it. They’re actually not tracing light rays at all–just finding the corners of various shadows from some arbitrary point.

Who cares what the camera software does? The after-work is up to the photographer.

Kukye

Hatred makes one become irrational. The photographer in a hurry to blame Israel for some perceived atrocity decided to do some “enhancement” to the photograph.

He knew such a picture would somehow command attention if he only could alter IT A HELL OF LOT!!!!

Dale Thompson

So if the photographer had spent hours in a dark room, dodging & burning that would be ok but using a computer overlaying multiple layers of the same image to bring out the shadows, colors and highlights is wrong? One of the most revered photographers of all time Ansel Adams did this, it’s called the zone system, he did it chemically because that’s all there was. There is no way B&W film has that tonal range unless you overexpose and under develop and spend hours in the darkroom.

I worked as a press photographer during college, one of the guys I shot with would compose images and pass them off as real. By that I mean we would be at some tragedy like a tornado’s aftermath and he’d collect objects and arrange them in the yard like they were randomly deposited and shoot the picture, I thought that was wrong, he thought that told the story. If all this guy did was use the computer to enhance a shot regardless of how much I’d say it’s ok and I’m a purist. If on the other hand its a composite of multiple images or staged then it should be stripped of the award.

Dale Thompson

So if the photographer had spent hours in a dark room, dodging & burning that would be ok but using a computer overlaying multiple layers of the same image to bring out the shadows, colors and highlights is wrong? One of the most revered photographers of all time Ansel Adams did this, it’s called the zone system, he did it chemically because that’s all there was. There is no way B&W film has that tonal range unless you overexpose and under develop and spend hours in the darkroom.

I worked as a press photographer during college, one of the guys I shot with would compose images and pass them off as real. By that I mean we would be at some tragedy like a tornado’s aftermath and he’d collect objects and arrange them in the yard like they were randomly deposited and shoot the picture, I thought that was wrong, he thought that told the story. If all this guy did was use the computer to enhance a shot regardless of how much I’d say it’s ok and I’m a purist. If on the other hand its a composite of multiple images or staged then it should be stripped of the award.

Everyone here is missing two major points: 1. RAW format can be edited too; who’s to say the RAW wasn’t edited and then simply saved at JPG, in fact thats usually preferred by professionals. 2. More of an opinion, but why in the world is JPG even an acceptable format for this level if photo contest!! RAW or PNG or some other lossless should be the requirement!

mistermysteryguest

A sad moment in history shopped worse than modern movie posters.

Jeff Cruz

Photography in essence is always subjective. From the basic ways the photographer will crop and image to the focal lengths of the lens. So will B&W photography be banned as well? Removing colour is subjective so why not ban all B&W photos from the press? Because it’s silly that’s why.

This article was quite difficult to follow and quite frankly everyone is wasting their time trying to determine if anyone is at fault. The problem is technology and times change while rules don’t. It’s time to get with the times.

filter

All this angst over techno mumbo jumbo – and what catches my eye is that there are no woman present for this funeral photo-op.
Not a one…

jimmy37

The moment a fact is changed, it’s a lie.

A photograph CAN BE a fact. But in many cases, photographs are staged or cropped to omit the truth. And, when it comes to Middle East photographs, most of them fall into that category.

This photographer lied to get the effect he wanted. So if he’s caught, he simply says that’s not what I saw?? PUH-LEEZE!

Click

What do photojournalism and truth have in common these days anyway?
A powerful and emotive image indeed, but the camera could be recording an elaborately staged setup, as has been done so many times before.

‘Tis Moi

The only crime here is that rockets are killing babies & that the massive discussion & attention is over how the dead children’s photo was enhanced…it’s a sick world.

Ed Hamlin

I have held since my teens that a photojournalist turns in what he she gets when the exposure is made. If the contest is based not only on the tradition but a code of ethics to be unbiased presenting the truth, subjective as it is, then there should not be any manipulation other than global corrections to exposure, contrast, and color.

The winner should be based on skills in the field not in the darkroom.

James Simmen

Ansel Adam created the world of enhancement by dodging and burning his black and white images. This image isn’t fake. The photographer merely created a painting from the image he took. The first tools of any photography application is light/color/tone/sharpness. It means the photographer just took the picture and knew he could make up for any errors in film speed, f stop or shutter speed later on in his photography application.
It is up to the judges to know what the photographer did before they make their final choice so that they can decide if the photographer “just went too far this time.”
The judges made the error, not the photographer.

Richard Lynch

This is a stupid article, frankly, obviously grasping at straws to pose a ‘scandal’. If a photographer adjusts color and sharpness in a photo it is NOT the same as altering content. Some people might see the color and sharpness differently with the naked eye, and it is not necessarily a photo alteration in the sense that there are no transposed heads, different backgrounds, itemization that changes the validity of the record of the scene. As far as the adjustments being “agressive” … that is lunatic. The “evaluation” of the photo and the JPG artifacts is pretty ridiculous, and easily explained by sharpening. If dodging was used to bring out other details, SO WHAT? Someone suggested HDR, and while I think that also doesn’t matter, it is a ridiculous claim — single shot HDR is nothing but glorified dodge-and-burn. It couldn’t be multi-shot HDR as the group is obviously moving and a string of shots would not have been fired to capture identical position of the individuals.

I would personally go one step further in tolerance, in that had the photographer changed the alley to a similar local spot, would it really have mattered? The event occurred… The picture records the event. If it were moved to the streets of NY, that would be a profound and unacceptable alteration as it changes the event (place). But that is my own, relaxed, perspective. I take photos that are mine and make them look as I believe they should. Sometimes that means significant alteration. A journalistic photo is one where the captured content is not significantly modified to change the meaning. I would never use a dramatically altered photo as a journalistic piece… but then we are talking the moral fiber of the photographer.

The purist argument for photographers — that they have to stick with what is shot — is totally absurd. Any good photo will reflect good technique (and some measure of luck, ask Ansel Adams). The capture, even before digital, was manipulated in the darkroom by choices in exposure, paper, chemicals/processing, cropping, dodge/burn. It is impossible to limit exposure adjustments and the result based on the original exposure choices… and even then what is the point? To prove that the shot was technically executed correctly? People who take photos that are good will generally not do it consistently with luck. Technical understanding is an achievement of experience, and congratulations to those who have the technical expertise. For someone to take offense that a photo was not executed perfectly speaks about the insecurity of the photographer raising the question. Clever cameras make everyone better picture-takers. Photographers craft a result. Photoshop is part of that crafting, just as the darkroom was. The most consistent and best photographers will be a master of all of the craft in achieving their vision.

As far as there being a problem with light in the photo… I see evidence of reflective materials on the walls to the left (shutters and windows), and who knows what is to the left of and behind the photographer that might be re-directing light… and whether he had an assistant with a cleverly placed reflector… Might there have been a fill flash? This discussion seems to be more like sharks in bloodied water than from sense. Does the lighting seem unusual? Absolutely. Does that prove it couldn’t happen? Not at all. Go find the alley, and you’ll have your proof.

The guy who wrote this article should apologize, especially after grasping at straws on the update so he doesn’t look like an idiot.

Varun Posappa

Does the picture convey the message to the world about what is happening ?? I think that is good enough. How you convey the message should be left to the photographer. If he thinks that the image does not require any corrections then fine !! If he thinks he has to make changes and make the picture look better to convey the message the its still his choice !! If you can click a better picture then DO IT !! Stop complaining !!

If you still want to complain then complain if the news has been manipulated.

Ivan Procházka

In my opinion, quite too much retouching on the photograph for Spot News category.
And I think it was unnecessary to do those changes. He could easily win with the first version of the image printed in newspaper. At least it would be fair and square.http://ivanprochazka.com/store/PaulHansen.gif

Alexander Kleibrink

The saddest thing is that manipulation has been taken for granted for a good while now, whether it’s banking, news outlets, politics or taking pictures to scoop up prizes. If a newspaper article turns out to be partly fabricated, shouldn’t we be outraged at a partly fabricated picture as well? Oh wait, there’s still the “artistic value” of a picture that the media is trying to sell us…

Bowser

Remember, we found out early and often that photoshop and its allied and affiliated apps are another theater of operations in the terrorist’s kit bag, to be used early, often, and always for dramatic effect, especially when hauled out for easy display for readers of Reuters, MSNBC, and CNN, in areas where caucasian boots on the ground with laptops are tough to keep in the field and alive for lengthy periods of time to gather the truth. I still chuckle sadly when I think back to those shots, which grew in number over time, when that poor baby was hauled out of the Baghdad rubble over and over again and passed hand over hand in the noonday sun, to somewhere up the line. The initial horror of this arrow, so willingly plucked from Baghdad Bob’s quiver of increasing inanity in his ever more shallow war of words in that real conflict of 10,000 pound block busters, would run the gamut from incredulity to finally, idiocy and insanity.

rehammmagdy

ggggggggg

Karmen Velusa

Savvy blog post , For what it’s worth if people are wanting a IL GCLA-1 , my colleague came across a fillable document here https://goo.gl/Sv7zyt

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